Advertising ethics - racism

Media Prima pulls out ‘racist’ Ramadan ads

Malaysia’s leading media investment group Media Prima aired a controversial, race-sensitive advertisement during the festive season of Ramadan in August. They were forced to axe a serious of these racist advertisements on 8TV channel that were suggestive of how other races should act in public. In addition, MP’s CEO, Ahmad Izlam Omar tweeted a simple apology followed by deflecting the issue by conversing about a random topic – musical brass instruments. Below is another tweet telling the public to "chill" about the racist ads.

Source: (joshuaongys.com)

A very distasteful ad, in my opinion, it depicted a Chinese girl in skimpy clothes eating in public during the fasting month and further mentioned this is how NOT to act. How much more insensitive could you be? Stereotypes are never a good thing; they lead to misinterpretations and can be hurtful, it’s unethical.

The compilation of the racist Ramadan ads by Media Prima.

Another example of racists advertising videos would be the one aired in Australia about KFC. It features a Caucasian guy, identified as Mick amidst a sea of rowdy coloured people in the stands, he is portrayed as the civilized one and how he cons them to calm down with KFC chicken and he utters the words "Too easy." after. (Owens, 2010)

According to Walsh (2006) it mentions about being aware of cultural and situational aspects to ensure that all parties are respected as mentioned in (Putnis & Petelin 1996). The Media Prima advertisement was rude and gained backlash on social media. This is not the first time 8TV has gotten into trouble with issues like this, they were previously fined RM 50,000 for it.

Based on the Malaysian Code of Advertising Practice, it states that “advertisements must not identify or typecast each particular racial group or sex with vocations, traditional values and backgrounds” (The Code of Advertising Practice, 2006). This series of Ramadan has done that, they judged and were not sensitive in considering the wellbeing of other races.

Racism does have an ideological basis which includes social practices such as discriminatory discourses and other interactions (Van Dijk, 2011). Racial contestation marks the logical outcome of a population that has a racial hierarchy where one race is superior to the rest (Silva, 2001). 

References:

1. Media Prima 201`, 2011 Ramadan TV ads Dah Kena Banned nih, video, YouTube, 2 August, viewed on 11 November 2011, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZQmuomAGQQ>.

  

2. Owens, J 2010, KFC’s cricket ad featuring West Indians slammed as racist, The Australian, viewed 8 November 2011, <http://www.theaustralian.com.au/media/kfcs-cricket-ad-featuring-west-indians-slammed-as-racist/story-e6frg996-1225816762016>.

3. Walsh, M 2006, ‘The ‘textual shift’: Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal text’, Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 24-37.

4. Putnis, P and Petelin, R 1996, Professional Communication : Principles and Applications, Prentice Hall, USA.

5. The Code of Advertising Practice 2006, Advertising Standards Authority Malaysia, viewed 4 November 2011, <http://www.asa.org.my/thecode.htm>.

6. Van Dijk, T 2011, Discourse analysis, Racism and Immigration, viewed on 5 November 2011, <http://www.upf.edu/dcpis/_pdf/2011-2012/pda/Discourse_Analysis.pdf>.

7. Bonilla-Silva, E 2001, White supremacy and racism in the post-civil rights era, Lynne Rienner Publishers, London.